Oh, Lanzhou, would you let me be your spellchecker?! I read recently that in Beijing there is an effort under way to correct all the silly English signs in time for the Olympics – such as the multi-cultural monument that is labeled, "Racist Park." Here in Gansu province, I’m simply surprised at how much public English there is. The better buses – the ones with automated announcements of the stops – give the info in both Chinese and English. And many commercial signs offer both languages. The quirkiness of the signs is great fun. Errors are of two predictable types: mis-spelling and skewed translation. In the latter category, I recently heard a student performer introduced, and we were told he would play "the oral organ." The student came on stage and played the harmonica – very well, I might add. Similarly, there’s the boutique I have walked past it a few times, perplexed. Today I finally decided that "lie fallow" is an attempt at "leisure." Sport and Leisure. Right? As for "The King of Beef Noodies," (is "noodies" clear in the photo?) it’s actually a chain of noodle shops, and all the signs are alike.



















There are amusing contrasts everywhere, daily. Yesterday I looked out the window and noticed that there was a traffic jam, but it didn't seem to faze the street sweepers, who were busy making new brooms for themselves.






























There are diapers for babies now in the eastern cities, but I haven't seen any here. The little ones still wear the traditional split pants . . . brrrr!

No photos for this one, but "Parental Discretion is Advised":

Above the gurney where my friend rests uneasily, there is a wall calendar. It depicts a royal blue sky with wisps of white clouds, a green field dotted with yellow flowers, and three perky, smiling nurses in immaculate white garb. The title reads, in English: "Nature and Harmonious Goodwill for Life." My friend is lying under a heap of quilts. Nurses in dark green scrubs cruise in and out at intervals to hook up a heart monitor, do an allergy test, listen to her breath sounds. Right outside the door, a young woman on another gurney wails and whimpers in pain from a broken leg. My friend observes that it sounds like the girl is giving birth. A man pokes his head in the door and gazes around; after he leaves I realize that the blood smeared on one side of his face is not his own. His comrades troop past the door, and one of them is holding a large wadded cloth against a bloody head wound.

It’s near midnight on a weeknight in December, and we are in the Emergency Department of the Lanzhou #1 Hospital. The room is filled with battered furniture and cabinets where medical supplies are sorted in dollar-store plastic bins. A wastebasket near the door overflows with used swabs and dressings, tracked about as people come and go. A stray adhesive EKG electrode has been stuck to the window frame.

My friend has a high fever and respiratory symptoms, and will soon be admitted for treatment. She is vomiting into the wastebasket she’s brought with her, and I’m stroking her head gently with my fingertips. When I take the wastebasket out into the corridor to find the "washing room," the girl with the broken leg has mercifully been whisked away, ideally to pain relief and speedy treatment. The man with the head injury is leaning against the corridor wall, surrounded by a cluster of supporters, perhaps family , friends, co-workers. I do my best to avoid stepping in what I take to be his blood on the floor of the corridor, clumped and spattered here and there.
When blood tests finally confirm a diagnosis we don’t have the language to understand, my friend, too, is whisked away. Swathed in blankets and a scarf, she is wheeled out into the 20 degree F. night and up a ramp to an adjacent building. There’s a delay while someone is found who knows where to find the light switch in the elevator, so we need not ride up in the claustrophobic darkness. Our ascent takes us to the respiratory unit, where my friend joins three other sufferers in a small room. One is an elderly woman, another a middle aged woman, the third a young teen whose mother is curled up in bed with her. The beds are iron cots, each with a rack underneath for the patient’s washbasin, brought by herself. Shared night stands are a place to store personal belongings and, most importantly, food. In China, the hospital provides medical care. The patient is expected to supply her own nightclothes, personal items, and meals. Although by now it’s nearly 1 A.M., the ceiling light is blazing and the patients are wide awake and full of curiosity over the strange foreigner who is about to become their bunkmate. When my friend is settled on her cot, and I know her co-teacher will stay the night, I leave and take a cab home.

The next day, it takes me quite a while to find my friend. She has been transferred to the first available semi-private room. It is in a distant wing of the hospital – it seems like a distant wing of the universe from her room last night. It’s as if she has gotten off the #124 bus and boarded . . . well, the #109, off peak. This is like a state-of-the-art 1950's hospital room in the U.S., with an adjustable hand-cranked bed, a wardrobe, and even a telephone and TV set! She still needs her friends to bring her three meals a day, but she can take calls from her family in the U.S., and some of the nurses speak a little English. Here she receives her four "bottles" a day – intravenous infusions that are the preferred method of medicine delivery in China. She also takes dozens of pills every day, but is never able to get clear answers about her diagnosis or her treatment. The fever is soon gone; the frustration is chronic.

My friend was released after 8 days in the hospital, during which time she was allowed to go home twice for a few hours to gather belongings. She disobeyed doctors’ orders and took a shower each time; there are no facilities at the hospital (only hall toilets shared by many) and apparently bathing is contraindicated. She never did get a clear statement of her diagnosis. She will travel to Nanjing in a few weeks to be checked by a western physician with whom she can communicate freely and directly.

I can’t stop thinking about the three other patients in my friend’s first hospital room, and the man with the head wound, and the young woman with the broken leg. What they all have in common with my friend is that they were being cared for in the #1 hospital of a provincial capital city. The best facility for many kilometers in any direction. They are the lucky ones.

After a Christmas weekend filled with festive parties and rich food (along with seemingly endless rounds of dishwashing), Ruth and I made the natural choice tonight – we went out to a restaurant. A Chinese restaurant, of course.

Christmas in Lanzhou has been full of surprises. The first was the appearance of holiday merchandise early in December. The supermarket Santa whose picture I snapped was animated and sang Christmas ballads, in English, in a Bing Crosby-esque voice. The cashiers in that same supermarket were already wearing their red and white stocking caps, and it wasn’t long before tinsel appeared everywhere and Old Saint Nick smiled from every shop window. On the other hand, Ruth and I eventually gave up our quest to buy nativity figures. There were none to be had, even with the help of our best local detectives.



I had missed mass on the fourth Sunday of Advent, so I was unprepared for what awaited me when I turned the corner toward church on Christmas morning. The courtyard from a distance looked like a cross between an Olympic village and the grand opening of a car dealership. As we entered the courtyard . . . well, I’ll let the photos do their job. The creche was tucked away behind the tree.

























Inside the church, the creche occupied one corner of the nave. It wore a giant canopy ablaze with flashing Christmas tree lights. The nativity scene itself was delightfully, childishly out of scale with itself and its surroundings. Rae and I joined others kneeling on a strip of carpet before the Christ child. Later, as we took our seats, we saw that the church was lavishly decorated with tinsel garland, the windows filled with dozens of Santa decorations. "Oh, look!" Rae whispered to me, giggling, "Santa is giving Bambi a gift right beside the fourth Station of the Cross!"


The Bishop was present, and baptized a large group a adults during the mass. I took advantage of the luxury of being a foreigner in China – one can act weird and automatically be excused. So I wandered up to the front and joined the group of children who had gone to get a closer look. The
Bishop intoned the name of the each candidate three times before pronouncing the words of baptism and pouring the holy water from a pitcher. The congregation applauded loudly, despite the fact that most of us wore gloves or mittens in the unheated church. Questions of style aside, the celebration of Jesus’ birth, and delight in the growing numbers of Christians, is wonderful.


Our colleagues and students have all been enormously enthusiastic about Christmas. One day last week the English Department treated us to an afternoon of karaoke followed by a lavish dinner. I have received many cards and phone greetings – my favorite was a group of second-years who sang to me over the phone on Christmas eve. They then merrily demanded that I greet them in Chinese. The only thing I could muster was, "Wo ai nimen!" (I love you all!)
I knew for certain that Christ is alive and well in China last Thursday afternoon, when I met my adult students at our extension campus. These are middle school teachers, married adults, who are returning to university to get their bachelor’s degrees. They were poor people before they came back to school full time! So you can imagine how moved I was when they presented me with a beautiful mother-of-pearl necklace, a gift from the class. In the midst of review for the final exam, one of the students slipped out and came back with a sack of hot roasted chestnuts for me – another extravagance. Almost embarrassing. Later I trudged through the frosty twilight to the university bus, clutching my gift and my fragrant sack of chestnuts, humbled by the generosity of these impoverished teachers. As usual, my Chinese colleagues were waiting at the bus stop, stamping their feet against the cold, laughing and joking in the warm circle of familiarity that never includes me. But this day I had a sack of roasted nuts to share, and for a brief bus ride, I became part of the circle. They seemed grateful not only for the treat, but for the welcome news that the "foreign teacher" is, in fact, a real human being. I still don’t know enough Chinese to understand their jokes, but God’s grace transcends language.